Quick Links

Club PA 2.0 has arrived! If you'd like to access some extra PA content and help support the forums, check it out at patreon.com/ClubPA

The image size limit has been raised to 1mb! Anything larger than that should be linked to. This is a HARD limit, please do not abuse it.

Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

We called it the Traveler, and its arrival changed us forever. Great cities were built on Mars and Venus; Mercury became a garden world. Human lifespan tripled. It was a time of miracles. We stared out at the galaxy and knew that it was our Destiny to walk in the light of other stars.

But the Traveler had an enemy. A Darkness - which had hunted it for eons, across the black gulfs of space, centuries after our Golden Age began. This Darkness... found us. And that was the end of everything.

That is, until Peter DinklageNolan North found you, Guardian!

Destiny: Penny Arcade G&T Saves the Universe and Everything in It is an online multiplayer action role-playing sci-fi-fantasy *deep breath* first-person shooter for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 and the first title in a proposed 10-year, zillion-dollar franchise from Bungie and Activision. It’s MMO-like – think gear, skill trees, leveling up, and party play – with an emphasis on exploration and discovery. As of September 15, 2015, we have entered Year Two of Destiny, which has ushered in a host of new content, quality of life changes, UI improvements, weapon balance tweaks, and whole new ways to play. At its core, Destiny is still a cooperative role-playing FPS with levels and rep to grind and new and exciting gear and weapons to seek out. But it's getting a whole lot bigger with version 2.0 and its biggest expansion yet, The Taken King.

Still relevant: The game is set in our own solar system, 700 years in the future, following a prosperous period of exploration and colonization ushered in by the arrival of the “Traveler,” a mysterious celestial body (pictured above). The Golden Age came to an abrupt end as a result of a momentous event called “the Collapse,” a calamity that wiped out human colonies everywhere. Humanity has retreated to the Last City on Earth, our shared home and the launching point for our journey back to the stars, and from within its walls, we have begun to rebuild. We have begun to fight back. But even as we stand tall, our Light visible in the canyons and craters of far-off worlds, blinding our enemies with its brilliance, the Darkness threatens to close in around us. And everything we know about our enemy is about to change.

The Taken King

In Year One of Destiny, we the Wise and Noble Guardians of Pax Arcadia traveled through space and time in defense of Human, Awoken, and Exo, rising to meet every challenge and ultimately emerging from a year's worth of adventures bearing the spoils of war and the bounty of exotic weapons, sturdy and stylish armor, fortune, and fame. Today, the Tower stands because of the bravery and sacrifice of our ranks. Our legend is known far and wide across the bloodied fields of the Crucible. We have earned the favor of the Queen and now protect her Reef from those who would tear it apart.

At times, our successes seemed inevitable, almost routine. We traveled backward and forward through time; we crushed our foes underfoot in encounter after encounter; we destroyed the heart of a god - more than once. But we faced trials as well, true challenges that required complete cooperation and tested our limits, especially when we plunged into the depths of the Dark Below and stood face-to-hideous-face with Crota, Hive Prince and Son of Oryx. In time, he fell like the rest. We took his wretched, cursed husk and held it aloft as a trophy.

Now a deeper Darkness stirs. From the shadows beyond, Oryx himself has learned of our triumph, and he will not abide our insolence, our courage - our Legend. He is assembling a mysterious, twisted force that he plans to unleash upon our world. It is our duty to stop him. Prepare yourselves, Arcadians: the Taken King comes for us all.

Join the ranks of Pax Arcadia! Our clan is on both systems!(and with the new firmware, we now have a PS4 Community!)

We've assembled a Bungie.net group - and within that group, a PlayStation clan and an Xbox clan - so that PA G&Ters can play together. We're Pax Arcadia, and we're currently making our way through endgame content and crushing the Crucible in six-man fireteams on a nightly basis!

Edit (Sept. 22, 2015): We presently have room in the PA clan on Xbox One, but we're full up at the 100-person cap on the PS4 side for both PA and PA2. That being said, we're typically cycling people out for inactivity lasting over six months and spots tend to open up very frequently! Follow the instructions below!

To join:
1. Send @GMaster7 (on the PS side) or @ObiFett (on the Xbox side) - or preferably, both - a PM, letting us know that you're joining the group(s) and applying to the clan.
2. Join the Bungie.net group for Pax Arcadia (right here, at this link). If necessary, you can hit up the group for Pax Arcadia II (right here), either instead or in addition, and join that, too. You don't need admin approval to join the groups.
3. Once you're in one or both Bungie.net groups, click "Set as PlayStation Clan" in the banner if you're on PS3/PS4 or "Set as Xbox Clan" in Pax Arcadia's banner if you're on 360/XB1 to officially request admission to that group's respective clan (either PA or PA2). If you're on PSN, you'll probably need to apply to PA2, the overflow clan. If you're on Xbox, you can apply to PA and don't need to mess with PA2.
4. Add yourself to the Pax Arcadia Mega-Roster that we've created to keep track of membership. Use the tabs at the bottom to select your console, and put yourself at the bottom of your tab's list. We'll bump you up to your proper alphabetical placement.
5. If you've sent us a PM and added yourself to the Mega-Roster, we'll accept you as soon as we can.
6. Friend some PAers, hop online, and take to the skies in the name of Pax Arcadia!

I think I'm only going to get one character through IB this time around. I've been dialing back my Destiny play as of late, and I don't need any of the gear badly enough to grind out 3 rank 5 packages.

I hope the ticket launcher has a decent vendor roll. I could use a good legendary launcher.

To be fair, the 1000-yard stare sniper rifle has got to be the easiest to obtain, with the vendor version having a good set of perks and I think also being a reward from a quest asking you do a nightfall (again with decent perks).

Comparing it to Black Spindle is a bit tough, because the latter takes up an exotic slot in a mode where it doesn't start with any ammo.

What I think is more annoying (to the extent it was just a fun holiday event where winning didn't really matter) from that list though, are the positions of Thorn and Ice Breaker.

Thorn dampened the advantages of the buff from your partner dying (i.e. the quick recovery) while Icebreaker by-passed the overall game decision to not have you start with special ammo in small pvp game types. I'd hope that if we got event like this, Bungie would take into account those weapons somehow.

Anyway, how do people feel about the new ammo changes in Trials and similar game modes now that it's been out for a few weeks? It seems like things can spiral / snowball for losing the first round and not getting any special ammo, vs a team that manages to pick special ammo up.

I certainly understand where Bungie are coming from if the idea is to get people to use primaries more and not get sniped in round one, but I'm not really sure of the application.

Shotguns are fine. Snipers are powerful, but have a higher skill ceiling than most guns in the game. Crimson Doubles / Trials tend to draw more of the better PvP crowd, the folks that spent hours upon hours getting good with snipers. It's not like Thorn where you can just pick a 1000-yard Stare and magically start rez-sniping and hitting 4.0 K/Ds.

Looking at guardian.gg by game modes, if you look at Control, shotties are above snipers. In Clash they are pretty close to the same. Same with Rift.

The Elimination game types just involves different strategies and makes one person going in close to the enemy team much more dangerous and can leave your orb in a bad spot.

To be fair, the 1000-yard stare sniper rifle has got to be the easiest to obtain, with the vendor version having a good set of perks and I think also being a reward from a quest asking you do a nightfall (again with decent perks).

Comparing it to Black Spindle is a bit tough, because the latter takes up an exotic slot in a mode where it doesn't start with any ammo.

What I think is more annoying (to the extent it was just a fun holiday event where winning didn't really matter) from that list though, are the positions of Thorn and Ice Breaker.

Thorn dampened the advantages of the buff from your partner dying (i.e. the quick recovery) while Icebreaker by-passed the overall game decision to not have you start with special ammo in small pvp game types. I'd hope that if we got event like this, Bungie would take into account those weapons somehow.

Anyway, how do people feel about the new ammo changes in Trials and similar game modes now that it's been out for a few weeks? It seems like things can spiral / snowball for losing the first round and not getting any special ammo, vs a team that manages to pick special ammo up.

I certainly understand where Bungie are coming from if the idea is to get people to use primaries more and not get sniped in round one, but I'm not really sure of the application.

Well the solution there is you start with a sidearm and then switch to a sniper either on death or at the end of the round, so then you start the next round with special no matter what. Which is what basically everybody is doing unless they decide to just run with Icebreaker or Invective.
I'm not really sure that taking one round before everybody hops in the aim boat makes that much of a difference, but I could be wrong.

Played some Clash last night on Pantheon. The first 5 minutes of the match were just everyone with a sniper rifle plinking back and forth. Goddamn boring.

Well to be fair that's kind of the map layout's fault. Although looking at some streamers play Trials on it a few weeks back, I noticed there are some clear run paths you can make coming from A side that you won't cross the sniping lanes. Still, that map is butts.

To be fair, the 1000-yard stare sniper rifle has got to be the easiest to obtain, with the vendor version having a good set of perks and I think also being a reward from a quest asking you do a nightfall (again with decent perks).

Comparing it to Black Spindle is a bit tough, because the latter takes up an exotic slot in a mode where it doesn't start with any ammo.

What I think is more annoying (to the extent it was just a fun holiday event where winning didn't really matter) from that list though, are the positions of Thorn and Ice Breaker.

Thorn dampened the advantages of the buff from your partner dying (i.e. the quick recovery) while Icebreaker by-passed the overall game decision to not have you start with special ammo in small pvp game types. I'd hope that if we got event like this, Bungie would take into account those weapons somehow.

Anyway, how do people feel about the new ammo changes in Trials and similar game modes now that it's been out for a few weeks? It seems like things can spiral / snowball for losing the first round and not getting any special ammo, vs a team that manages to pick special ammo up.

I certainly understand where Bungie are coming from if the idea is to get people to use primaries more and not get sniped in round one, but I'm not really sure of the application.

Well the solution there is you start with a sidearm and then switch to a sniper either on death or at the end of the round, so then you start the next round with special no matter what. Which is what basically everybody is doing unless they decide to just run with Icebreaker or Invective.
I'm not really sure that taking one round before everybody hops in the aim boat makes that much of a difference, but I could be wrong.

I did see people using sidearms, I just assumed that swapping out to a sniper either on death or at the end of a round, the ammo would go back to zero.

To be fair, the 1000-yard stare sniper rifle has got to be the easiest to obtain, with the vendor version having a good set of perks and I think also being a reward from a quest asking you do a nightfall (again with decent perks).

Comparing it to Black Spindle is a bit tough, because the latter takes up an exotic slot in a mode where it doesn't start with any ammo.

What I think is more annoying (to the extent it was just a fun holiday event where winning didn't really matter) from that list though, are the positions of Thorn and Ice Breaker.

Thorn dampened the advantages of the buff from your partner dying (i.e. the quick recovery) while Icebreaker by-passed the overall game decision to not have you start with special ammo in small pvp game types. I'd hope that if we got event like this, Bungie would take into account those weapons somehow.

Anyway, how do people feel about the new ammo changes in Trials and similar game modes now that it's been out for a few weeks? It seems like things can spiral / snowball for losing the first round and not getting any special ammo, vs a team that manages to pick special ammo up.

I certainly understand where Bungie are coming from if the idea is to get people to use primaries more and not get sniped in round one, but I'm not really sure of the application.

Well the solution there is you start with a sidearm and then switch to a sniper either on death or at the end of the round, so then you start the next round with special no matter what. Which is what basically everybody is doing unless they decide to just run with Icebreaker or Invective.
I'm not really sure that taking one round before everybody hops in the aim boat makes that much of a difference, but I could be wrong.

I did see people using sidearms, I just assumed that swapping out to a sniper either on death or at the end of a round, the ammo would go back to zero.

Interesting to know at any rate.

We saw a lot of Icebreakers in Trials on Monday night. We were facing much higher skilled teams / professional carries so lots of Icebreakers. It's still a 1-shot headshot in Trials, so getting a sniper bullet in the first 10 secs was a big friggin deal.

To be fair, the 1000-yard stare sniper rifle has got to be the easiest to obtain, with the vendor version having a good set of perks and I think also being a reward from a quest asking you do a nightfall (again with decent perks).

Comparing it to Black Spindle is a bit tough, because the latter takes up an exotic slot in a mode where it doesn't start with any ammo.

What I think is more annoying (to the extent it was just a fun holiday event where winning didn't really matter) from that list though, are the positions of Thorn and Ice Breaker.

Thorn dampened the advantages of the buff from your partner dying (i.e. the quick recovery) while Icebreaker by-passed the overall game decision to not have you start with special ammo in small pvp game types. I'd hope that if we got event like this, Bungie would take into account those weapons somehow.

Anyway, how do people feel about the new ammo changes in Trials and similar game modes now that it's been out for a few weeks? It seems like things can spiral / snowball for losing the first round and not getting any special ammo, vs a team that manages to pick special ammo up.

I certainly understand where Bungie are coming from if the idea is to get people to use primaries more and not get sniped in round one, but I'm not really sure of the application.

Well the solution there is you start with a sidearm and then switch to a sniper either on death or at the end of the round, so then you start the next round with special no matter what. Which is what basically everybody is doing unless they decide to just run with Icebreaker or Invective.
I'm not really sure that taking one round before everybody hops in the aim boat makes that much of a difference, but I could be wrong.

I did see people using sidearms, I just assumed that swapping out to a sniper either on death or at the end of a round, the ammo would go back to zero.

Interesting to know at any rate.

We saw a lot of Icebreakers in Trials on Monday night. We were facing much higher skilled teams / professional carries so lots of Icebreakers. It's still a 1-shot headshot in Trials, so getting a sniper bullet in the first 10 secs was a big friggin deal.

It's slightly disappointing hearing that even though I've got an Icebreaker in the bank.

It certainly seems to be against the spirit of what Bungie were hoping to achieve with the special ammo changes (I'm sure when they spoke about the changes, they even brought up the story of how annoying it was running towards the enemy in round one and eating a sniper shot in the head at the start).

I could imagine a submachine gun would work well as a secondary. Fits that awkward medium range just past shotguns and inside auto rifles, and could be useful as a shield eater in PvE. Sidearms work for this right now, but a trade-off in possible accuracy for piles of bullets would work well I think, depending on situation. I would totally rock one alongside a scout rifle in PvP.

I want more defensive capabilities in the game more so than weapons. This would be a boon in both PvE and PvP. Granted Shadestep isn't as useful in PvE, it'd be neat to have those "oh-shit" buttons that can help you avoid some really shitty situations in one way or another.

The sniper favored meta is definitely starting to wear on me (and a lot of others, too). I don't mind headshot kills, but rez snipers and the special ammo 'fix' are garbage. Nothing worse than trying to pick up a teammate only to have them instantly explode into death and get you killed in the process. Special ammo change only encouraged people to bust out old broken guns, the sidearm exploit, use regen ammo guns, and primary-secondaries like NLB and Universal Remote. That change is a half measure, that doesn't address the strength of snipers.

Two changes I can see making a difference:
-Make precision damage null for 3 seconds post-rez. You can still take damage, but the equivalent of a bodyshot worth.
-Reduce headshot damage with them. It should still kill in one shot, but I shouldn't be able to put down a person in a super with a single sniper shot.